Last night I stayed up til 3:30 because I decided I was going to trawl the internet. Sometimes when I get in a bad sleep cycle and keep sleeping in way later than I want to, the best way to fix it is to stay up till 3 or 4 one night, wake up at a relatively early time, and then everythign resets itself. (Often happens when I'm working on a comic.)

Tonight I don't want to stay up as late. But the temperature has cooled off like CRAZY, so it's the first night in oh, at least a few weeks, that we've opened our windows and turned the central air conditioning off for the night. DAMN THESE CRICKETS IS LOUD. Oh, but how I missed these happy summer sounds!

It's one o'clock in the morning, I've been on the computer far too long, and my eyes feel like I touched them with butter because of how long I've been staring at glowy screens. Good night, moon, good night, cool-breeze fan, good night water bottle, good night forum.

We were up until about 5:00AM yesterday because we had met up with some old friends earlier in the evening. We woke up at 3:00 in the afternoon, went out to get bagels, and then Maria fell asleep again until about 9:00. She was up for roughly another three hours, and then slept through until noon today.

You're just jealous because you can't get away with speaking in the third person...

Terotrous wrote:Free time to sleep for as long as you want is very underrated. I should have made more use of it when I was in college.

Growing up, I always had trouble falling asleep at night, I would just lie awake and my brain would start running and feeding back into itself, forming a loop that kept going faster and faster until whatever. It was the worst between age 11 or 12 and 17. Senior year of high school I started going to bed at a certain time, getting ready for bed before then, and realized that getting enough sleep was pretty fucking grand.

Then I went to college. All my life, I couldn't sleep in much past about nine a.m., regardless of when I'd gone to bed. Ten a.m. was pretty much my limit. Once it got into those double-digit hours, I felt so gross that I just needed to get out of bed. Then, freshman year of college, I had a roommate who wouldn't come in until 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, and would sleep until noon or so unless she had class. So I started sleeping late too, cuz it was kinda awkward, I thought, to get up and be moving around while she was still sleeping, especially if I needed the microwave which was right next to her head. Then sophomore year came along, and things kinda were entirely shit, so I would go to bed around ten or eleven o'clock at night and just stay in bed ridiculously late because the longer I stayed in bed, the longer I could burrow under my comforter with my earplugs in and my fan blowing to drown out the noise of the braying horses I lived with.

The worst was the day that I had a class at 4 pm and actually slept in until about 3 pm. I know lots of people sleep later than that regularly, but I think it's WHY I was doing it that makes it a concern, as well as the fact that it wasn't like I was going to bed late. I was too depressed and/or annoyed to actually get up int he morning and get out of the house, so I would just retreat to a literal dreamland and spend as much time as possible there.

After that though, there's no way I could go back to getting the tiny bits of sleep I used to get when I was in middle and high school. I need a good nine hours, preferably more, or else I'm grumpy and complain the whole day about how little sleep I got (Boohoo only seven hours ) It must be happening- after all of the years of having them as pets, I am finally turning into a cat myself, starting by sleeping all the time. OMG NEKOS <3 <3

VeryCuddlyCornpone wrote:After that though, there's no way I could go back to getting the tiny bits of sleep I used to get when I was in middle and high school. I need a good nine hours, preferably more, or else I'm grumpy and complain the whole day about how little sleep I got (Boohoo only seven hours )

Ahahaha! Us, too. We remember staying up to watch Adult Swim in high school, going to bed around 1:00AM, and then getting up for school at, like, 6:00. That seems both absolutely INSANE and IMPOSSIBLE now. We must be getting old.

You're just jealous because you can't get away with speaking in the third person...

MariaAndMichelle wrote:Ahahaha! Us, too. We remember staying up to watch Adult Swim in high school, going to bed around 1:00AM, and then getting up for school at, like, 6:00. That seems both absolutely INSANE and IMPOSSIBLE now. We must be getting old.

Aw man, same here. Err, except for the part about Adult Swim. I used to be able to pull all-nighters, or get by on 3-4 hours sleep, all the time... Especially when insane CG jams kept me up.

But now that I have a proper job I rarely stay up till past midnight, even on weekends.

I have learned to be able to fall asleep wherever, whenever. I've slept on cots, in the the seats of a variety of military vehicles, once wrapped up in a poncho while leaning up against my rucksack, and even once fell asleep while standing up though that was more due to exhaustion than anything else. I've also learned how to sleep with a rifle, and it's really not so bad once the metal warms up. I've had bedtimes of 7PM, 10PM, 3AM, 6AM, 12PM, and pretty much most of the other hours of the day.

I can't pull all nighters like I used to, but when I have to I can. My natural sleep cycle, the one I will revert to without any environmental influence, is about 2AM-10AM. That's my golden window, but if I have to get up between the hours of 3-5AM then I generally tend to do okay (assuming I went to bed about 4 hours prior to wakeup). I can't do the multiple days without sleep thing, I just don't have the endurance. One of the many reasons I never tried to go to Ranger school.

The worst sleep I ever had was back in March of this year, when I was at Hohenfels Training Area and my on duty hours were from midnight to noon. Hated it, hated it. I generally just slept in my HMMWV between 1-4AM cause nothing was ever happening, and if something did happen it would have been loud and woken me up.

I came back from a field exercise in ROTC so exhausted, and mind you I'd slept maybe 4-6 hours spread out in a roughly 72 hour period, that I slept for 16 hours straight when I got home. My roommates thought I had died.

Avatar courtesy of Fading Aura.Heed these words: I do not draw. Photos if you're lucky.

Terotrous wrote:I can remember all of my dreams, but whenever I have one that seems like it might lead somewhere interesting I usually get woken up by something.

Free time to sleep for as long as you want is very underrated. I should have made more use of it when I was in college.

Actually being awaken abruptly like that is why you remember your dream. When you can sleep al long as you can, sleep that follows just makes you forget your dream. There are a few techniques how to recall a dream after you've forgotten it, but they'd require staying in bed even longer so I never practise them.

The worst was the day that I had a class at 4 pm and actually slept in until about 3 pm. I know lots of people sleep later than that regularly, but I think it's WHY I was doing it that makes it a concern, as well as the fact that it wasn't like I was going to bed late. I was too depressed and/or annoyed to actually get up int he morning and get out of the house, so I would just retreat to a literal dreamland and spend as much time as possible there.

Is it possible that everyone has that exact same phase some time in their life?I always needed a solid 9h sleep though, even when I was pulling an all-nighter during college I still had to make it up.I've given up on all-nighters somewhere around the same time I gave up on mosh pits.

I have learned to be able to fall asleep wherever, whenever. I've slept on cots, in the the seats of a variety of military vehicles, once wrapped up in a poncho while leaning up against my rucksack, and even once fell asleep while standing up though that was more due to exhaustion than anything else. I've also learned how to sleep with a rifle, and it's really not so bad once the metal warms up. I've had bedtimes of 7PM, 10PM, 3AM, 6AM, 12PM, and pretty much most of the other hours of the day.

I can sleep anywhere. Busses and cars are my speciality, as soon as I get into bus I get sleepy. Sleeping in an airplane while one baby was constantly crying behind my back, that was something.

It's the way to be! Now if only there were a reliable way to do it forever and not be poor.

I've been the pretty much same way until this past week. My part time job suddenly has a ridiculous amount of stuff for me to do they actually need me every day. I've gotten so use to going to sleep and getting up whenever I want most of the week that the idea of having a set schedule feels all "I have to wake up 5 days in a row? That's ridiculous! Working 5 days a week is so unfair!"

During my first year of college I'd stay up almost every night till 1 or 2 in the morning, drawing (as I usually didn't have to be out of bed till 10AM). Sadly, I can't remember the last time I did that.

I also find that I'm less tired the less sleep I get. 6 hours seems to be the magic number for me, if I want to be as awake and alert as possible...but that hardly ever happens, and I usually end up sleeping 7-9 hours. I don't have to be at work till 9:30 most mornings so I usually set my alarm for 8 - if I set it any earlier than that I have trouble falling asleep...somehow, the knowledge that I will be woken up earlier does that to me...

I don't think I've ever done an all-nighter. Unless you count that time I did a 24-Hour Comic. I sometimes plan to pull all-nighters but give up midway through because my head starts pounding... (from CAFFEINE WITHDRAWL, perhaps?! )

It's the way to be! Now if only there were a reliable way to do it forever and not be poor.

I've been the pretty much same way until this past week. My part time job suddenly has a ridiculous amount of stuff for me to do they actually need me every day. I've gotten so use to going to sleep and getting up whenever I want most of the week that the idea of having a set schedule feels all "I have to wake up 5 days in a row? That's ridiculous! Working 5 days a week is so unfair!"

DLM X-13 wrote:somehow, the knowledge that I will be woken up earlier does that to me...

Yup, I have the same problem. Even if I'm not getting up to GO anywhere, just being aware that THE ALARM IS SET! is enough to make me anxious.

MariaAndMichelle wrote:Ahahaha! Us, too. We remember staying up to watch Adult Swim in high school, going to bed around 1:00AM, and then getting up for school at, like, 6:00. That seems both absolutely INSANE and IMPOSSIBLE now. We must be getting old.

Yes!!! It's so funny because the earliest I've ever had to get up for class in college has been 8:00 a.m., for a class at 8:30. Which usually means that by the end of the semester I'm getting up more like 8:15, 8:20, 8:25... just wake up, roll out, and RUN TO CLASS!! No matter how many times I tell myself that if I get up earlier and eat a proper breakfast I will feel much much better and alert for the day, I still end up laying there sayign "nawww man I really don't need THAT long to get ready..."

The best part of me complaining about waking up at 8:15 is thinking about the fact that for YEARS I was regularly getting up at least as early as 7:00, 6:30 if it was a band morning.

I can do an early morning once in a while, but not voluntarily- it needs to be that I'm getting up to go somewhere, like last summer where I needed to drive out with my dad to a house sale around 6:15, 6:30. If I just set the alarm and say "Today will be productive morning," then when it beeps I just turn it off and say "Productive morning IN BED!"